Song of the Week: Dirty Projectors, "Dance for You," Swing Lo Magellan

Song of the Week: Dirty Projectors, "Dance for You," Swing Lo Magellan

The pre-release talking points for the new Dirty Projectors album seem to boil down to this: By focusing on songs, not songs strung together into a concept album, one of music's most unapologetically artsy bands is making a bold bid for accessibility. You know the recurring Jimmy Kimmel bit that mashes up local newsmakers reading from the same press release? You could do something similar with the press thus far on Swing Lo Magellan and find subtle variations on "most listenable record to date" and "most song-oriented set yet." Over and over, ad nauseam.

Now that it's actually here, the notion that the band is less challenging seems a little silly. Swing Lo Magellan ain't The Suburbs. It's actually an uneasy record — the melodies are slippery, the beats jittery, and the textures disjointed. Toss aside the single, "Gun Has No Trigger," point your cursor to any other track, and there's little to suggest this is poised to be some sort of commercial breakthrough. But that's not to say there aren't some great Dirty Projectors songs here. The set's best — the kind of song that mastermind David Longstreth might have based an entire record around in the "old days" — is "Dance for You." Handclaps, a splash of vocal reverb, and a simple guitar line add up to something equal parts Brian Wilson and M. Ward. And a short orchestral break (it's a burst, really) is as unexpected the sixth time you hear it as the first. Plus, hearing Longstreth sing the line "I boogied down the gargoyle streets" is pretty unexpected in itself. It's a song that, by Dirty Projectors standards, would be hard to have imagined a few albums ago. But accessible? That's debatable. What's not debatable is that a song this gorgeous and interesting will still be gorgeous and interesting long after the talking points have run their course.

Blur, "The Puritan"

Blur, "The Puritan"

Because Blur have already done what the Pixies haven't managed for going on nine years: actually record new music. So we don't think, even for a minute, their reunion is a blatant cash grab. And because, if you were ranking Blur's catalogue song-for-song, this would fall squarely in the top quarter.